But I Love You

It starts soft.

Of course it does.

Like all disasters —

with a beautiful morning

and someone who calls you

interesting.

You say things like

“I’ve never felt this before,”

and they smile —

not because it’s true,

but because they’ve heard that line

enough times to know

they still got it.

Love begins in the stomach,

not the heart.

In the chemicals.

In the lies your brain tells

so your hunger feels holy.

You bond over trauma,

quote dead poets like scripture,

and call your damage depth.

You think

loving broken people

makes you whole.

You call it chemistry.

It’s just matching scars for tattoos.

They show you

their best angle,

best story,

best self —

curated, cropped,

washed in the filter of want.

You fall for

the version they invented

just for you.

And they fall

for how falling makes them feel.

You mistake attention

for affection.

Intensity

for intimacy.

Late-night confessions?

That’s not love.

That’s loneliness in duet.

You trade futures

like promises —

children’s names,

shared shelves,

a house with a window

that frames the sea.

It all feels inevitable.

But love built in the clouds

always forgets

that gravity exists.

Then comes the rot —

slow, quiet, polite at first.

They forget how you like your tea.

You start correcting their stories.

The music feels off.

The silences feel louder.

You read

so you don’t have to talk.

You schedule touch

like laundry.

You say “love you”

like brushing your teeth

or locking the gate.

You mistake routine for safety.

You think

this is just how it goes.

You call your slow suffocation

compromise.

You call losing yourself

maturity.

But some part of you knows —

the magic’s gone.

And you’re just holding hands

with a habit.

This is when

the screaming gets quieter.

When sighs

speak louder than slurs.

You resent them

for the parts of you

they never agreed to fix.

They still breathe

the way they used to —

and now,

that’s enough

to piss you off.

You fight

over the dishes.

But it’s never about the dishes.

You flirt

with strangers.

But it’s never about the strangers.

You hate

how much they know you —

how they can predict your excuses,

quote your old apologies,

read your moods

like menus.

So you start

rewriting history.

Suddenly,

the way they touched your back

was possessive.

The poems they wrote

were performances.

The comfort they gave

was control.

You go full lawyer

on your own memories —

filing evidence

to justify the exit

you haven’t taken yet.

It doesn’t explode.

It evaporates.

One unanswered glance at a time.

One untouched shoulder.

One postponed visit.

You leave

like a thief

stealing your own baggage back.

You blame timing,

growth,

the stars,

anything but the truth:

you outgrew the illusion

you both agreed to pretend.

You cry —

not for the person,

but for the dream

you can’t recycle.

You chase new bodies

just to forget your own.

You call it healing.

It’s just distraction

in daylight.

In the quiet,

you wonder:

Was any of it real?

The laughter?

The long walks?

The always?

Yes.

Real —

like dreams in comas.

Real —

like echoes in empty rooms.

Real —

but only while it lasted.

You tell your friends

you’ve changed.

You haven’t.

You’ve just

found better grammar

to lie to yourself with.

You swear next time

you’ll choose better.

You won’t.

You’ll just fall for

a similar sadness

in different shoes.

Because that’s the curse

of people like you —

the ones who love

like hurricanes,

and hate

like history books:

obsessed with what happened,

never learning why it did.

But I can’t give you

any of that.

Because I love you

like I hate you —

fiercely,

messily,

with enough passion

to burn cities,

but not enough patience

to plant gardens.

And if that doesn’t sound

like love to you —

maybe that’s because

you’re still hallucinating

your fairy tale.

The fairy tale

that convinced you

hate was the antonym of love

when they really were siblings

bad blood, but blood nevertheless

and if it had to choose, 

love would pick hate over you

every day of the week.